AirSpaceMag.com

The Astronaut’s Life

“How does it feel to be part of history?”

“How does it feel to be part of history?” some reporter asked the STS-135 astronauts during an onboard press conference this afternoon.

Weightless plumbing: Garan studies the manual.

Well, some days probably feel more historic than others. Yesterday, for example, space station astronaut Ron Garan was on a spacewalk (above), wrestling a refrigerator-size piece of hardware into the shuttle cargo bay while orbiting Earth at 17,500 miles per hour.

Today he’s trying to fix the space station’s toilet. All part of the same job.